Julius Evola's Revolt, Part 32: Hyperborean Tendencies in Medieval Europe

HAVING taken advantage of the universalist tendencies of the Roman Empire, when Christianity gradually dispersed itself throughout Europe it still retained some of its more imperial aspects. In addition, the new religion was able to occupy those sites and shrines associated with the Continent's substantial number of heathen worshippers:

For all practical purposes, Christianity “converted” Western man only superficially; it constituted his “faith” in the most abstract sense while his real life continued to obey the more or less material forms of the opposite tradition of action, and later on, during the Middle Ages, an ethos that was essentially shaped by the Northern-Aryan spirit. In theory, the Western world accepted Christianity but for all practical purposes it remained pagan; the fact that Europe was able to incorporate so many motifs that were connected with the Jewish and Levantine view of life has always been a source of surprise among historians. [p.287.]

This spiritual and cultural mish-mash was the result of a mutual stifling. On the one hand, the warrior-races of Europe were not about to "beat their swords into ploughshares" (Isaiah 2:3–4) and, on the other, their link to the sacred had been appropriated by the Catholic Church. This led to an unacknowledged compromise through which Christianity, quite unlike its more peaceable namesake, slowly evolved into the kind of aggressive and warlike phenomenon that perhaps better suited the more volatile sensibilities of the Europeans themselves.

Ironically, Evola admits that the entry of Christianity into the West enabled the Roman idea to rise to "new heights". This seems particularly unusual when one considers that Rome was eventually forced to fight tooth and nail to preserve its waning reputation as the "Eternal City" in the face of a challenge from the East. Indeed, in the wake of much theological quibbling Christianity was to find itself divided into two irreconcilable factions: Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy:

The Byzantine imperial idea displayed a high degree of traditional spirit, at least theoretically. For instance, it upheld the ideal of the sacred ruler (βασιλεὐς αὑτοκράτορ) whose authority came from above and whose law, reflecting the divine law, had a universal value; also the clergy was subjected to him because the emperor was in charge of both temporal and spiritual affairs. Likewise, in the Eastern Empire the idea of the ρομαἲοι (the “Romans”) took hold and came to represent the unity of those who were elevated by the chrism inherent in the participation in the Roman-Christian ecumene to a dignity higher than any other people ever achieved. [p.288.]

However, although Evola can recognise within the Orthodox Church the traces of Tradition he is fully aware that such matters were being advanced by people of an inferior kind. Not racially, but spiritually. In order to maintain their grip on Eastern Europe, the Byzantine emperors resorted to violence and suppression but this was not enough to justify their claims to sacred authority. Evola accuses the Byzantine Empire of lacking the authenticity of an "inner character".

Moving on, the Italian believes that the Christianity that found expression through Western Catholicism was successful as a result of employing three main strategies:

(a) the rectification of various extremist features of primitive Christianity; (b) the organization of a ritual, dogmatic, and symbolic corpus beyond the mere mystical, soterioiogical element; and (c) the absorption and adaptation of doctrinal and organizational elements that were borrowed from the Roman world and from classical civilization in general. [p.288.]

Although Catholicism is not "Traditional" in the way that thinkers such as Evola, Guénon or Schuon employ the term, it nonetheless contains "Traditional" characteristics due to its cautious use of pre-Christian features.

Needless to say, being a recipient of those aspects ordinarily associated with sacred regality and a link with the supernatural is not enough to satisfy Evola and that which is good within Western Christianity was always outweighed by the bad. The deeply lunar and chthonic ingredients that went into the making of Catholicism, he tells us, was apparent from the very beginning and therefore one must question its authority. With the separation of Church and empire into two different spheres, thus epitomising the perennial clash between the brahmin (priestly) and kshatriya (warrior) castes of Aryan India, it became impossible to substantiate the claim that both enjoyed an unrivalled connection to the divine:

By analogy, if in every rational being the soul is the principle that decides what the body will do, how could one think that those who admitted to having authority only in matters of social and political concern should not be subordinated to the Church, to whom they willingly recognized the exclusive right over and direction of souls? Thus, the Church eventually disputed and regarded as tantamount to heresy and a prevarication dictated by pride that doctrine of the divine nature and origin of regality; it also came to regard the ruler as a mere layman equal to all other men before God and his Church, and a mere official invested by mortal beings with the power to rule over others in accordance with natural law. [pp.289-90.]

The consequence of this inverted relationship was a series of bitter medieval disputes between a succession of European popes and emperors, leading to the Guelphist-Ghibelline conflict that we discussed in Part 12.

Evola describes the Guelphist attempts to bring the political realm under the control of the Church as a revival of the "ancient gynaecocratic vision" that sought to reassert the feminine principle. This development led to a powerful reaction from the Ghibellines:

The Roman idea was revived by races of a direct Northern origin, which various migrations had pushed into the area of Roman civilization. The Germanic element was destined to defend the imperial idea against the Church and to restore to new life the formative vis of the ancient Roman world. This is how the Holy Roman Empire and the feudal civilization arose, both of which represented the two last great traditional manifestations the West ever knew. [p.290.]

The Germanic stocks who were so determined to wrestle political control from the Church were barbarian remnants of the old "Artic seat" and therefore representatives of Hyperborea's "primordial tradition". Despite the medieval setting, Evola compares the Northern spirit of the Ghibelline forces to

the world of the Aesir, the Nordic-Germanic deities who embody the Uranian principle in its warrior aspect. The god Donnar-Thor was the slayer of Thym and Hymir, the “strongest of all,” the “irresistible,” the “Lord who rescues from terror,” whose fearful weapon, the double hammer Mjolnir, was both a variation of the symbolic, Hyperborean battle-axe and a sign of the thunderbolt force proper to the Uranian gods of the Aryan cycle. [p.292.]

Whilst Evola often speaks of the "race of the spirit," in this case the veins of the Ghibellines were literally pumping with the mystical blood of those described in the Edda and thus compared to the priests of an imported religion centred on a degenerated "Aprodistic" spirituality their claim to a more sacred authority seems just.

It may have been the case that invading German tribes under the direction of Alaric I (370–410) had dealt a severe blow to the infrastructure of the Roman Empire, but their indefatigable virility ensured that the imperial idea itself survived. In fact it became a potent combination, and

both the idea of Roman universalism and the Christian principle, in its generic aspect of affirmation of a supernatural order, produced an awakening of the highest vocation of Nordic-Germanic stocks; both ideas also contributed to the integration on a higher plane and to the revivification in a new form of what had often been materialized and particularized in them in the context of traditions of individual races. “Conversion” to the Christian faith, more than altering the Germanic stocks’ strength, often purified it and prepared it for a revival of the imperial Roman idea. [p.292.]

As we saw in Part 11, at one time a pope would prostrate himself before the emperor and this was a clear indication that the Catholic priesthood was subservient. Much is made of the tithe system, for example, when European peasants were expected to give a share of their crops to the Church, but the feudal system itself was designed to express fidelity to the Emperor. It was certainly an imposition, even Evola attests to the fact, but he contends that it allowed each individual to find his or her true nature:

For the last time in Western history the quadripartition of society into serfs, merchants, warrior nobility, and representatives of spiritual authority (the clergy in the Guelph and the ascetic, knightly orders in the Ghibelline system) took form and affirmed itself in an almost spontaneous way. [p.296.]

The fact that the Emperor was viewed by his subjects as a god-man (deus-homo) was bound to cause problems with a Church that had already experienced the coming of a Messiah, and the resultant power struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines was not merely a spat between theocrats and politicians but something that was fought on a supernatural plane. From the Evolian viewpoint, of course, it was a medieval version of the age-old skirmish between the armies of North and South, solar and lunar, masculine and feminine.

In short, the Ghibelline fusion between the imperial and the universal had revived the idea of Traditional regality:

I have previously suggested that in the medieval imperial legend there are numerous elements that refer more or less directly to the idea of the supreme “centre”; these elements, through various symbols, allude to a mysterious relationship between this centre and the universal authority and legitimacy of the Ghibelline emperor. The objects symbolizing initiatic regality were entrusted to him and at times the motif of the hero “who never died” and who had been brought to a “mountain” or to a subterranean seat was applied to him. [pp.297-8.]

Emerging from this display of authority was the intense spirit of chivalry that we examined in Part 13. Ethics, morals, call them what you like; the knights had developed a system of values - much of it centred on the Grail mythos - that added a decidedly martial flavour to the more submissive and egalitarian nature of Christianity.

The reason Catholicism tolerated these factors, or at least until the intervention of the Guelphs, was due to the Church becoming considerably more "Romanised". However, following the clash between the Guelph and Ghibelline factions, they each

underwent a process of decadence, The tension toward the spiritual synthesis weakened. The Church increasingly renounced its claim to temporal power and royalty its claim to spiritual power. Following the Ghibelline civilization, which we may regard as the splendid spring season of a Europe that was destined to doom, the process of decadence will continue inexorably. [p.301.]

One might describe this Traditionalist interregnum as a final flicker of defiance from a civilisation that was finding itself increasingly under siege.